


Static

by LtLime23



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Imagine your OTP, Pondering Gaps, Your shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLime23/pseuds/LtLime23
Summary: In the face of overwhelming odds, I don't believe that honour alone drove Shepard to keep fighting.





	Static

**Author's Note:**

> In the face of overwhelming odds, I don't believe that honour alone drove Shepard to keep fighting.

The whispers chased themselves.  Tumbling over each other as they ducked and weaved, swirling in tighter and tighter circles.  Toing and froing with calls and answers, back and forth, incoherent mutterings merging, building.  Faster, louder, a tidal wave of static thickening the air, sucking the colour from the edges of vision.  A dead weight that deafened and suffocated, settling upon already bruised hearts and seeping into tired bones.

"What is it tonight?"

A gasped breath, fresh air, still flecked with spray from the turbulent surface, but fresh air all the same.

"The same as always."

"Don't lie to me."

A sigh.

"My lungs are starting to fill.  My clothes are sodden, my limbs ache."

The press of a delicate kiss against soft skin.  The round of a pale shoulder stark against the darkness.  The static fades a little, the echoes quietened.

"You are doing your best."

Head already bowed, acknowledging before the words have even settled between them their hollowness.  Chapped lips press a smile to a forehead.

"As are you."

Standing.  A rush of blood and the spike of a heartbeat, a reminder it is still there, still in step, beaten but not broken.

"Shepard," hesitance, "tell me."

A wry smile.

"I'm scared.  Not of the war, or the Reapers, or the politics or the choices.  I'm scared of you."

"Why?"

"I love you.  Yet I'll break your heart."

The sliver of sheets a sigh against the stillness.  Slender digits entwining with shivering strength, whispers once again pressed between heartbeats.

"I'll break yours too.  Over and over.  We both know we cannot keep our promises."

"Yet we make them anyway."

"Of course we do, we must."

The briefest of nods and a smile.

"Even in the face of overwhelming odds, here we are lost to one another like infatuated teenagers, a war rages yet all I think about is you.  Hundreds of thousands of lives hold their breath in unison, and yet. . ."

"I'm only fighting for you," a gentle hand reaches for weather-beaten skin, "because the scattered wreckage of a thousand broken promises hold no fear for me.  Even as our probability tends to zero, while your hand is in mine I won't give up our hope, our us."

"We fight because it is asked of us."

"We love because we can."


End file.
